PHOENIX–The puck has yet to drop on the 2009-10 NHL season, but already the biggest faceoff of the year is upon us.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie face each other in court today – lines drawn in the battle for the Phoenix Coyotes – in what has been a summer filled with stinging rhetoric, public posturing and thousands of billable hours.

As if this unlikely hockey city – where temperatures are expected to reach 41 C today – isn't sweltering enough, the action in the courtroom of Judge Redfield T. Baum is going to heat things up even more. It will be filled with all the key players – among them Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes and deputy commissioner Bill Daly – meeting in the same place at the same time for the first time since this Machiavellian melodrama – with its name-calling, backstabbing and subplots of betrayal – began to play out during the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Two cities await the outcome: Hamilton wondering if it will finally get a NHL team; Phoenix wondering if it will lose one.

There are a myriad of items that Baum must weigh today, and perhaps tomorrow, before ultimately deciding who will own the Coyotes when the team is sold in auction Sept. 10.

Today's key issues are whether Baum can sell the Coyotes to Balsillie over the objections of the league, and whether the judge can force a team to relocate, also against the wishes of the league.

"We know the motions that will be argued, but we don't have an expectation one way or the other as to what will be decided," said Daly, in an email, while en route to Phoenix. "I guess we will all find out (today)."

The NHL has a $140 million (all figures U.S.) bid on the table, enough to pay all the creditors but Moyes and coach-minority owner Wayne Gretzky. The league would keep the team in Phoenix and sell it outside of bankruptcy proceedings.

Watching closely will be a group of investors called Ice Edge, who hope to buy the team for $150 million next week, and keep it – for the most part – in Glendale. The group has reserved ice time in Saskatoon, enough for five games, if it gets approval to buy the team and play a handful of games elsewhere.

The league officially turned down Balsillie's ownership bid in July. That rejection is at the heart of today's hearing and at the core of the growing animosity between the billionaire and the commissioner.

Bettman and Balsillie will be available to answer questions the judge may have, but they won't be cross-examined by opposition lawyers. That's already been done through depositions late last month, and that bad blood has been spilled.

"The owners concluded that (Balsillie) was not a person they felt had the appropriate character and integrity and would not be a good partner in this league," Bettman said in his deposition of the ownership application rejection.

In a separate brief filed last night, the league added: "There is something sad ... about Mr. Balsillie's inability to grasp the plain fact that it is his conduct, insensitivity, perceived lack of trustworthiness and unwillingness to accept responsibility for his own actions over several years that has caused the NHL Board of Governors to wish to not be associated with him in the business of professional hockey,"

The league threw a few more punches yesterday in arguing it's too late for the Coyotes to move to Hamilton this season. The league took umbrage with the notion it wasn't doing as Balsillie had asked in making a second schedule with Hamilton as the home for the club.

"PSE, which has no contractual relationship with the NHL, had no factual or legal basis to make any demands of the NHL whatsoever, much less the extraordinary demand that the League rewrite its schedule at the eleventh-hour," reads the league's brief, which uses the word "cavalier" to describe Balsillie, who "evidently believes he has the right to do whatever he wants and that everyone should defer to him."

Balsillie's deposition, and that of his right-hand man, Richard Rodier, are "redacted," meaning they're publicly available. They believe the Maple Leafs are behind the blackballing of the BlackBerry magnate.

With files from Paul Hunter

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